--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues"
<curtisdeltabl...@...> wrote:
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Richard M" <compost1uk@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues"
> > <curtisdeltablues@> wrote:
> >
> > > I don't believe that causality is ever experienced. It is
> > > belief that bridges the cause and the effect in a person's mind.
> >
> > Very elegantly put.
> >
> > But it leads to a wicked thought. Doesn't that make the idea of
> > "causality" and "scientific law" as much a PROJECTION on to the
> > shit that happens as is, say, the idea of deities, sprites, spirits,
> > and other "superstitious" what-not? They're just alternative
> > "language games" for the same thing (stuff-that-happens)? You
> > choose the one that floats your boat best down the shit stream. But
the
> > one you choose is not necessarily TRUE, it's just the one that's
more
> > or less able to get you from your chosen A to your chosen B?
> >
> > Curtis - I thought you had a more progessive epistemology than
that!
>
> Scientific choices are not as random as that. Humans have been at
> it long enough to no longer need to use characters from literature
> as starting points for theories. This shift is historically called
> the "enlightenment" which makes Maharishi's misuse of his "Age of
> Enlightenment" which proposes going back to the pre-reason model,
> all the more ironically absurd.
Mmmm...The period known as "the age of enlightmenment" in the history
of the West has nothing to with "enlightenment" (in a meditation
sense). MMY had in mind the latter sense. He never "proposed" going
back to a pre-reason model from what I know! You may well think what he
advocated amounts to that - but then that's not the same as him
"proposing" that, eh?
I should not have mentioned "progessive epistemology" - my bad. Your
response was very interesting of course (but have you read Thomas
Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions?).
What I had in mind was something else really. It's that bit of yours
where you say "no longer need to use characters from literature as
starting points for theories"!
Science does not just get us from A to B ("instrumentalism"). It
carries with it an interpretation of the world that is NOT itself
"science". It is metaphysics (or, dare I say it? Religion!). It was
that excellent Curtis nugget that demonstrates this:
"I don't believe that causality is ever experienced. It is
belief that bridges the cause and the effect in a person's mind."
The religion of science (scientific triumphalism otherwise known as
"scientism") is built on "causality" and all that is bound up with it.
This is why triumphalists will assert that Science is laying bare "the
Laws of Nature" (capital L, capital N, as opposed to finding handy,
convenient associations which work fairly well for our purposes).
These reified, Platonic "laws" are very odd birds indeed. What ARE
they? IMO they're nothing else but the modern equivalents of the
deities of the ancients who believed that some order-behind-appearances
"explained" the way things are. Gods? laws? TomRtoe? TomAtoe?
So, no, we don't use "characters from literature as starting points for
theories". We use the agencies and controllers of causality named as
"laws" instead. And the meta-science is not itself Science.
Of course you CAN "do" science without subscribing to scientism. Many
do. Rather the same way as you can "do" TM without being a triumphalist
Hindu. And again, many do!
> You fill in the gaps as best as you can in the scientific
> method. You give more or less weight to different descriptions
> as you discover if it applies to more areas that strengthen the
>overall theory. Then you test the shit out of all the falsifiable
theories you can conjure up. Occasionally very good evidence that
cannot be denied comes along and blows your theory up, and a new model
is necessary to explain it and what you have discovered before. This
is happening less and less, not more and more in science, because we do
understand some stuff pretty well and we are building on that.
>
>
> Probability, statistics, and vaguely worded unfalsifiable predictions
give Yagyas all the wiggle room needed for people who already "know"
their effect and how they work to find all the evidence they need. We
have so many cognitive gaps, and sometimes it is hard to face how
poorly we are equipped to test such claims, especially after we have
paid for them.
>
> And then you have A-hole scientists who sometimes subvert the process
of inquiry into a way to support the latest pharmaceutical, only giving
the method lip service(Not the kind that feels good) for some gold
coins with "In God We Trust" stamped on them.
>
> And finally we have a complex mysterious world that has defied our
ability to achieve complete knowledge with absolute certainty and this
makes some people so nervous they turn to an explanation from a fairy
tale to help them go to sleep.
>
> So epistemological humility is appropriate in facing the world. But
that doesn't mean we don't know anything at all. We just don't
everything. And we always have to be on the lookout for things we KNOW
that aren't so. If we care about keeping it real, that is.
>
